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Betsy's Backyard Blog

Betsy Freese is an Executive Editor for Meredith Agrimedia, including Living the Country Life and Successful Farming. She grew up on a fruit farm in Maryland (see www.strawberryfarm.com) and has an agricultural journalism degree from Iowa State University. She and her husband, Bob, a veterinarian, live on a farm in Iowa where they raise sheep, hay, corn, and soybeans.

I've been making salsa all week and the tomatoes keep coming. The crop was slow to ripen during the cool, wet August and September. Now it's October and I have a bumper crop! We love salsa, so I add onions, pepper, cilantro and lime to the chopped tomatoes. I also made stewed tomatoes.

Caroline's art class at Iowa State University built a coffin shaped like an ear of corn. You can read about it here, and watch a video. Once it is finished it will be on display at the school before being auctioned off. This would be the perfect choice for an Iowa corn farmer, right? But it's going to be too nice to actually use as a coffin, I think.

We had 6 inches of rain on Tuesday and it sent Middle River over its banks and into the mature corn at our farm. It has retreated today, leaving mud, sand, and silt. I hope the crop is still able to be harvested without too much trouble. Bob has just about given up on making third cutting of alfalfa. It's been ready to cut for a month, but the rains come every few days. More rain is due tomorrow. Here's hoping for a dry fall!

I challenged readers to a "Biggest Tillage Radish" contest this fall. I planted a few seeds in my garden in August. The plants are up and growing. I'll wait until November to pull them for measuring. The goal of tillage radishes really isn't to grow the biggest, but to grow a uniform cover crop. They break up soil compaction. You can see more info here: http://tillageradish.com/

We grew a whole field of radishes and turnips last fall. (That field is in alfalfa this fall.) Our sheep grazed there in November and December. They ate so many they were burping radishes. They also got a little fat on them.

If you grow a big radish or other cover crop this fall, send a photo to staff@livingthecountrylife.com

My harvest this week was butternut squash. Some of them aren't fully ripe, but the squash beetles killed the vines. I will cut them in half, clean out the seeds, bake them and fill with brown sugar and butter.

My peach tree fell over two months ago during a storm, but didn't die. I propped it up on portable fence panels. The tree was heavy with fruit, so I waited until after peach season and after we got several inches of rain to straighten it altogether. Nowlan pushed it up and Bob used steel posts, rubber panels from an old hog barn, and cable to hold it in place.